Joined: 1/16/2008
Posts: 358
Location: The Netherlands
Haven't seen any TAS ideas for this game yet... I think it'd look quite impressive with perfect accuracy. Probably the strategies would change alot from non-TAS (e.g. what ship to choose)
If no-one is working on it yet, I might give it a go.
Rogue Squadron, where are you?!
I'm gonna assume that none of the upgrades are worth getting. Maaaaybe the advanced bombs?
I used to play this game with the music off. It makes a great change of pace, especially during the Death Star escape sequence in the last mission. Besides, we've all heard the Star Wars themes a million times.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
If no-one is working on it yet, I might give it a go.
This game is awesome. Good luck!
AzumaK wrote: I swear my 1 year old daughter's favorite TASVideo is your R4MI run :3
xxNKxx wrote: ok thanks handsome feos :D
Help improving TASVideos!
Joined: 1/16/2008
Posts: 358
Location: The Netherlands
Ideas on whether to use cheats for unlocking upgrades/ace-mode/vehicles? Imo the game is more interesting from an IL point of view... so cheats for unlocking would then allow for max results
What's an "IL point of view"?
I don't think upgrades or alternate vehicles are really necessary, personally. The base missions give you a good variety of vehicles to use, and the upgrades shouldn't make that much of a difference (unless you plan to pull out Vader's ship and just spam cluster missiles, but who the hell would want to see that?).
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Individual Level.
I imagine that means that DaTeL237 is more intrested in the time shown in the mission results screen for each mission, rather than the total number of frames in the movie file. Time going to the hangar to select a better than default ship be damned.
Joined: 1/16/2008
Posts: 358
Location: The Netherlands
So... I did a test TAS of the first level: Death Star Attack
DTM file: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/28275268360685408
Rerecords in the DTM file: 2846
I used several versions of dolphin and ended with 4.0-8534. I tried updating to newer versions of Dolphin (eg 4.0-8711) but then the replay file no longer works so I cannot further update.
Unfortunately I encountered several desyncs which makes continuing not very attractive.
The cinematics look weird in the encoding because Force 9:16 was enabled, but it was the only way I could be decent output at all.
I enter two codes that results in starting with all upgrades so the level itself is shorter.
It includes an 'Advanced Lasers' upgrade that makes each tower in part 1 require about 10 less hits with lasers.
It includes an 'Advanced Torpedos' upgrade that makes sure only 2 instead of 3 torpedos are needed per tower.
It includes an 'Advanced Shields' upgrade that allows me to survive crashing through a tower after it has been hit once (with a charged shot)
Time
The in-game time is only a few seconds faster than the real-time speedrun because the TAS starts without a memory pack.
I found an timer in the RAM. This timer stops during cutscenes. It also stops during out-of-bounds and death animations. I assumed it would be used as my final in-game time. This is why I crash on purpose at the end of part 1 and part 2. But at the end of the level I discovered my assumption to be incorrect. So the pure playing times certainly do not determine the in-game time... but I didn't research exactly what does. My current guess is that cinematics do also count, and thus for in-game time TASes one should use a save-game so the cinematics can be skipped.
Part 1
The most time-consuming is getting close enough to the towers to be in range. I use torpedos on the furthest towers so I don't have to go to them. Also one tower is destroyed by crashing into it, allowing fast movement (towards the furthest towers) to continue for longer.
Part 2
Awesome battle in my opinion :)
Part 3
This is a boring part for a TAS. I chose to make it look like you don't even have to move to complete it. The ship takes minimal detours from a horizontal line. When the TIEs arrive I only spin the X-Wing and make it look like the TIEs and Lord Vader are extremely bad at aiming.
Accuracy is 'only' 84% because the lasers shoot 4 or 2 beams simultaneously and they are all registered individually. In many cases it's impossible to get all beams to hit, for example if the enemy dies on the 1st out of 4 laser beams.
I did notice that the game uses a hit-counter and counter for shots from lasers and torpedos. The hit-counter is also increased when a tower, turret or enemy is destroyed by crashing into it. This means the amount of hits can be bigger than the amount of shots.. so it makes me wonder if it's possible to make the game display an accuracy score higher than 100% :)
Ideas/Findings
I think I should have disabled the crosshairs while I was in the menu. For a TAS they are only blocking the view and dont really help the viewer (or TASer).
The game contains an option to enable 'progressive scan' (instead of Interlacing). In theory it should result in a better picture, but I couldn't see any actual difference. In this run I didn't change it. Also the emulator was running with ProgressiveScan functionality disabled
By now I think a gold-medals TAS would make for a more interesting result because it requires more enemies to be killed. It also makes planning much more complex.
At the start of a section of a level it takes a while before the Roll function becomes available
Bombs are refilled when player loses a life.
Dying just before a cutscene results in shields (but not bombs) to be reset without losing a life.
The left/right control stick rotates the player along the world's horizontal plane. The up/down control stick rotates the player along the player's up/down plane. These rotations are controlled independently, so while rolled to (close to) 90deg... one can rotate twice as fast along the world's horizontal plane.
By button-bashing (at once per 4 frames) it's possible to shoot much faster than when holding the fire-button-bashing.
Speed can be controlled with the L and R button, but also with the trigger. So squeeze the R trigger (without pressing R button) to increase speed.
R button can be used to open wings at any time, so the duration of fast flying can be controlled perfectly, so should always be used when not firing. In this run this could have been used in several places.
There are a range of things that stop me from continuing TASing. However, I hope it inspires someone else to pick up this game :)
Link to video
Nice work!
EDIT: You and others might already know this but there is a co-op version of this game included on the SW: Rogue Squadron Rebel Strike disc, allowing you to play through Rogue Leader with splitsceen. If someone does decide to TAS this game I think it would be even more interesting to see a co-op run, but I can definitely understand not wanting to double-up on the amount of complexity.
Joined: 1/16/2008
Posts: 358
Location: The Netherlands
alec kermit wrote:
Nice work!
EDIT: You and others might already know this but there is a co-op version of this game included on the SW: Rogue Squadron Rebel Strike disc, allowing you to play through Rogue Leader with splitsceen. If someone does decide to TAS this game I think it would be even more interesting to see a co-op run, but I can definitely understand not wanting to double-up on the amount of complexity.
Wow I did not know that.. indeed that would make for a much more interesting TAS.
Thanks for sharing!
That was a pretty great trench run. Nice work!
I'm ambivalent about co-op runs personally. They're a lot more difficult to make and they tend to be hard to watch, especially when they're split-screen.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Nice work!
EDIT: You and others might already know this but there is a co-op version of this game included on the SW: Rogue Squadron Rebel Strike disc, allowing you to play through Rogue Leader with splitsceen. If someone does decide to TAS this game I think it would be even more interesting to see a co-op run, but I can definitely understand not wanting to double-up on the amount of complexity.
Wow I did not know that.. indeed that would make for a much more interesting TAS.
Thanks for sharing!
It's certainly a lot easier with the addition of TAStudio. you can just do one controller, roll back and do the other controller lol.
Joined: 1/16/2008
Posts: 358
Location: The Netherlands
Derakon wrote:
That was a pretty great trench run. Nice work!
I'm ambivalent about co-op runs personally. They're a lot more difficult to make and they tend to be hard to watch, especially when they're split-screen.
Hmm good point. While watching a LetsPlay of the co-op version I noticed that a good part of the game is quite linear.. in those parts the co-op would only be annoying. Not clear to me yet whether it would be worth the effort. Also I noticed more differences... for example TIEs in the 1st part of Death Star Attack.
solarplex wrote:
DaTeL237 wrote:
alec kermit wrote:
Nice work!
EDIT: You and others might already know this but there is a co-op version of this game included on the SW: Rogue Squadron Rebel Strike disc, allowing you to play through Rogue Leader with splitsceen. If someone does decide to TAS this game I think it would be even more interesting to see a co-op run, but I can definitely understand not wanting to double-up on the amount of complexity.
Wow I did not know that.. indeed that would make for a much more interesting TAS.
Thanks for sharing!
It's certainly a lot easier with the addition of TAStudio. you can just do one controller, roll back and do the other controller lol.
Once Bizhawk supports Dolphin that would make things easier :)
Joined: 1/16/2008
Posts: 358
Location: The Netherlands
DaTeL237 wrote:
I did notice that the game uses a hit-counter and counter for shots from lasers and torpedos. The hit-counter is also increased when a tower, turret or enemy is destroyed by crashing into it. This means the amount of hits can be bigger than the amount of shots.. so it makes me wonder if it's possible to make the game display an accuracy score higher than 100% :)
The game also shows statistics when you fail, so it was a small effort to try getting >100% accuracy... and it works :)
If I don't shoot at all the game registers 100% accuracy independent of the hit or kill count. But if the lasers have been used once or more then the hits/shots ratio is used:
